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Learn More About: Homelessness Consulting

It’s time to put politics aside and remember people are at the heart of this work

BY JUDITH TACKETT

In the past few weeks, I picked up on the general confusion of providers who are a little overwhelmed by the slew of homelessness consulting efforts that are going on in Nashville.

The question is, which national expert is working on what and how independent are they?

Why is it important that we understand who is in town to work on what?

Consultants have always had a huge influence in our community on how we approach homelessness. I argue, under the current administration, their decision-making power trumps that of local experts in a way that I have not seen under prior administrations.

Our community is in a unique position. For the first time in, well, ever, there are millions of dollars on the table to actually help people experiencing homelessness move off the streets as quickly as possible. Most of these funds are dedicated to outdoor homelessness:

A. $50 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to be spent by December 2026 (see my column from July 6 at https://issuu.com/the-contributor-live). Metro Council has not approved those dollars yet, nor is it clear which organizations will be receiving what type of contracts;

B. More than $7 million in regular Continuum of Care (CoC) allocations, which is an annual competition requiring community collaboration and priority setting. That federal competition is open right now and Nashville over the past four years has been able to increase those funds by 120 percent through a collaborative and strategic community effort. Most of these dollars are renewal grants, meaning they have already been assigned to certain local programs;

C. Up to $4.88 million in a one-time, special CoC funding competition to address outdoor homelessness over the next three years. A third of the funds awarded could eventually become annual allocations to our community to continue the work. These would be new homelessness dollars for our community.

With a lack of clear local leadership on homelessness (the interim director of the Metro Homeless Impact Division recently stepped away to be replaced by another interim director), the Mayor’s Office has taken on the role to decide the direction and focus on outdoor homelessness and bring in national consultants to help. All the funding sources outlined above would further the goal of significantly reducing outdoor homelessness, with a special focus on encampments, over the next couple of years.

With a lot of funding at stake, it is imperative for local providers to know which consultant is doing what. Per the paper’s request, Metro provided us with the following information of current consultants that are contracted to work on homelessness efforts in Nashville:

• The Mayor’s Office contracts with NOLA for $500,000 over two years. The scope of the work included a report evaluating Metro’s (in particular MDHA, Metro, CoC, Housing Trust Fund) response to homelessness and affordable housing and include recommendations, then in a second phase assist with planning and implementation of those recommendations. The current work is focused on the $50 million ARP proposal. The local lead is provided through SKH Consulting LLC. who brings in other national leaders for support.

• The Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) entered a contract of $25,000 on behalf of the CoC with local consultant Dayle Savage of Spiral Learning to help with the update of the CoC’s Strategic Community Plan. That plan is posted for public input right now.

• The Mayor’s Office and MDHA have brought in Cloudburst, a company that provides technical assistance** paid for by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to assist with CoC governance, capacity building among agencies, implementation of next steps in a performance plan and planning and implementation to move people from encampments to housing.

• Early in the COVID pandemic, the Mayor’s Office and MDHA brought in ICF, another HUD TA provider to assist in Nashville’s COVID response to homelessness. It was expanded later on to include assistance with a potential Homeless Management Information System*** (HMIS) request for proposal, which is currently on hold. ICF, however, seems to be leaving this particular work in Nashville at the end of September.

• The Metro Homeless Impact Division receives assistance from CSH and Data Remedies to fill in staff shortages and continue to support and strengthen HMIS.

I am also aware that Community Solution’s Built for Zero movement has been working at no cost with Nashville providers and in collaboration with the Metro Homeless Impact Division on striving toward implementing strategies to reach functional zero for Veterans and recently also for families.

There are pros to working with outside consultants:

• Input from national experts can be extremely helpful to local leaders. It provides a different aspect and voice. It strengthens and sometimes shakes up the monotony of local meetings to keep the work focused and outcomes-oriented. A good consultant works in tandem with local community leaders to give enough space for input from the provider and ensure the inclusion of people with lived experiences in the decision-making process. A collaborative approach with the community generally strengthens local leadership with a goal to create sustainable efforts, so that the work is able to be carried on when they leave.

But there are also cons to working with consultants (these are based on my personal experiences working with Metro over the past years, including with some consultants I still highly respect):

• If it is unclear to the community who the consultants are, what they were brought in for and who pays their bills, it can create confusion and disturb ongoing collaborative efforts. Building a strong communitywide system in an area that traditionally has been working in silos needs strong local leadership to create a sustainable effort. Consultants that work in isolation from a community perspective may miss those opportunities. The problem is that an approach where local experts do not feel heard or validated creates distrust. It is unfair to expect that consultants can fix widespread distrust.

How do you build that trust with a consultant who may not fully understand the local culture among providers? You align a new consultant with a local group of experts that is widely trusted and thus, create a combined leadership team that is viewed as independent from the funding source.

Generally, I believe an administration should be focused on listening to their constituents including local providers of services. What I have observed while I was still at Metro and more so now that I left, is that the current administration under Mayor Cooper tends to over-value loyalty and use consultants to replace local leadership in order to impose their own political plans.

With so many dollars on the table, what do we do to build trust despite a Mayor’s Office that seems to be more divisive than inclusive?

For one, our community has a track record of collaboration. My advice is that the community needs to trust in that and actively participate with consultants in community meetings.

We also need to be realistic. Whoever controls the dollars has the final say. But what the administration needs to realize is that its responsibility as public servants is to work with the community.

The unique opportunity before us right now is to have input in a $50-million plan to address outdoor homelessness. We all know the Mayor’s Office focus is on reducing encampments, especially with an election year ahead of us.

The truth is, people are dying on Nashville’s streets and no matter what the motivation, people living in large encampments and other outdoor areas are in desperate need for safe, indoor spaces that lead to permanent housing with the right supports.

Therefore, our end goal is the same, which is to end homelessness for people living outdoors. That’s why I call on local providers, advocates, and activists to come together. Your voice cannot be ignored by neither the Mayor’s Office nor Metro Council when you collaborate and join forces.

And to politicians, I ask you to put politics aside, listen to local experts, create an environment of trust that consultants can thrive in, and work with the community to build a sustainable leadership effort to prevent and end homelessness for all populations.

Let’s start with passing a solid $50-million plan for the ARP funds allocated to addressing outdoor homelessness, and I call on the Mayor and on Metro Council to ensure that the next Metro budget sets aside new city funding for support services dollars that is needed to ensure programs continue after the ARP funds run out. Local dollars will be needed to enhance federal and potential state dollars and create a sustainable effort that the ARP funds alone cannot guarantee.

* The Continuum of Care (CoC) is a federally designated area in which all stakeholders from a community work together to build a system to prevent and end homelessness. CoC’s receive competitive federal funds for their systems work.

**HUD technical assistance provides resources, tools, and support for recipients of HUD funding such as state and local government grantees, public housing authorities, tribes and tribally-designated housing entities, CoCs, and nonprofits.

***A Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) is a local information technology system used to collect client-level data and data on the provision of housing and services to homeless individuals and families and persons at risk of homelessness